There are many things that depress me, and a good number of them feature prominently in Little Miss Sunshine.
Suicide attempts, people involved with self-actualization programs, bankruptcy, beauty pageants, watching helplessly as major embarassments roll slowly and unavoidably towards you…
Car troubles, depression, desperation, forced family activities, not talking, crushed teenage dreams, and 31 flavors of failure. I’m really not sure why anyone would call this a comedy, though I laughed enough times. And I can’t really fault any particular part of this film; it’s quite good in all respects from writing and acting down to the colors and composition of shots. I guess I had just expected it to be funnier, and when I read somewhere that it was a little overwhelming in its cynicism, I didn’t really expect that it would actually bother me.
But for me, it did get to be a bit much. As the tagline says, this is a family on the verge of breakdown, and it gets to be a little painful to watch. Steve Carrell is the guy who I most wanted to see, as a gay suicidal Proust scholar (Carrell’s similarites to Mike Reynolds continue to deepen), but for reasons unknown, being with his sister’s family seems to have cheered him right up, or at least taken the edge off (his wrists) to the point where he’s just a bearded zombie led around by the teenage son who should have been on suicide watch, rather than watching for a sucide.
Alan Arkin makes great use of his character’s flaws, and the tone of the film reminds me of a less-funny version of some of Reynolds’ favorite grotesque 1970s comedies, such as Where’s Poppa? and Little Murders, in which Arkin starred. This doesn’t have the absurdity of those films though, farcical as it may be, and I may be in the minority, but I’d have liked a few more jokes. Maybe watching World War III slowly break out on TV every night is getting to me.
Even the little victories one might catch on the news get smacked away a couple of days later. Reading about Floyd Landis’ comeback at the Tour de France – a staggeringly phenomenal Stage 17 after a disasterous ride the day before was all the more remarkable because (as if it needed anything else), Landis had revealed that his hip has severe arthritis, and the guy can’t ride his bike for more than a couple of hours before horrible pain starts shooting through his leg. Shit, man. Now this. I want to believe him, but I’m not sure how, especially when I’d vote for locking Barry Bonds out of every baseball stadium from now until the day his head finally goes pop.
So, on a warm Saturday night in Hollwood, 3000 of us gathered at a cemetery to drink, eat, and watch that almost perfect comedy, Pee-Wee’s Big Advanture; a movie that should have absolutely nothing to do with reality. You may not remember (I didn’t), that the opening scene shows Pee-Wee, on his red, single-speed cruiser bike, winning the Tour de France (which seems to have held its final stage in a park in Burbank), to the cheers of a couple dozen people, before awaking to a reality which is a fabulous man-child wonderland. It’s a reality far more removed from what we’d call the real world than Pee-Wee’s tour de France dream.
It’s the stuff inside Pee-Wee’s home and neighborhood in the first act of the film that still fascinate me the most: The Abraham Lincoln frying pan that fires a half-dozen pancakes to the ceiling, the dialogue with his breakfast and Mr. T cereal (“I pity the fool that doesn’t eat my cereal!”), watering the lawn with the wacky-water toy, and doing his shopping on Third Street promenade before Woolworth’s had closed down.
Pee-Wee Herman builds a world around him, or molds reality until it fits his own personality. In his TV show, he never left his house until the final credits every week. Maybe it’s hard for me to judge this film now, because it and the TV show were true highlights of high school years. They offered the slightest hope that just maybe becoming a grown -up wouldn’t royally suck – and that you wouldn’t always have to act like a tough numbskull to avoid getting in fights.
So again, maybe it’s me, but this film appears to have aged really well. The jokes are still funny, the sense of lost California-retro is even stronger than it was 20 years ago. It’s also Tim Burton’s first feature film, and it confidently trots out early versions of his tricks, only hitting snags during a couple of later neon-filled dream sequences that didn’t work the first time around, let alone now. The brief end-of-the-film appearance of Phil Hartman (who co-wrote the film with Reubens and Michael Varhol) always makes me a little sad, this night in particular. A minute after it seemed like the film was about to start, Paul Reubens came out, stood on part of a mausoleum, and after seveeral minutes of a standing ovation, talked for a few minutes about the film. He seemed genuinely touched by thee reaction, and while he’s been criticized in the past for hogging the “Pee-Wee” spotlight from other people who helped him realize his vision, that wasn’t the case here. Besides Varhol, he brought along as much of the cast as he could find; Francis, Chuck the bike store owner, Dottie, and so on. A fun night, and still one of the best comedies I’ve ever seen.
mark, do you usually get this maudlin when dayna abandons you for owls?
The only thing that keeps Mark from pervasive maudlinness is caramel corn. Oh, and maybe cats.
I like this … what is it, essay? post? I don’t think you’re overestimating the Pee Wee movie; every time I catch twenty minutes of it (and I never catch less than twenty minutes of it), I instantly sink in. (A small list of films similarly enrapturing: Close Encounters, Jaws, Rushmore, Big Lebowski.) What I love is that the film avoids teaching Pee Wee a lesson, even parodically or ironically. Pee Wee doesn’t change. But because of that changelessness, that bizarre state somewhere east of childhood, Pee Wee has always carried for me a whiff of sadness, of mortality even. There you go: how’s that for a.m. pretension. Pee Wee Herman’s blithe distance from the real world stinks of the grave. It makes absolute sense to me that they’d show it in a cemetery.
I won’t speak to World War III, but Little Miss Sunshine is hilarious in a heartbreakingly Chekhovian kind a way (if Chekhov had spent anytime in the carnival that is American stripmall culture). I laughed about as much as I cried and the climatic scene shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. There are a few missteps (an unlikely meeting in a convienence store as well as a major character’s discovery which should have been detected long before this family hit the road). Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear; all turn in very fine work. Steve Carrell can do absolutely no wrong (as far as I’m concerned). I was particularly surprised by Paul Dano. This kid took some big risks in L.I.E. a few years ago and has followed up his work in that film with smart choices (including roles in The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Fast Food Nation, The King and upcoming releases: Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood and Spike Jonez’ Where the Wild Things Are). It’s not really high praise to say this is the best film of the summer but it is.
Well, I finally saw Sunshine, and it’s up towards the top of my year’s list so far. I agree with Mark about the pervasive sadness–hell, even after he posted this, I still expected the film to be a bit punchier, a bit lighter on its toes, pleased with its pervasive cynicism. But it’s–especially in its finest scene, a family dinner early on–less concerned with discomfort than depression.
Which means: I don’t think it bears comparison to the bleak comedies of the ’70s (which Mark referenced, which I love), and it’s miles from Solondz country. Chekhov ain’t a bad referent. The opening title comes after a quick introduction to the main characters, each caught up in her or his own little private failures, closing with Carell’s Frank, sitting dejected, eyes sunken and wet–and the words come slowly, one at a time: “Little. Miss. Sunshine”–and it’s less a punchline than a reminder of the gap between the name and the image behind it. And throughout, the film attends to the great gaps between aspirations and actuality–from that moment on, it’s a steady illustration of the whittling away of hope.
Even the inevitable ode to failure–on a pier, overlooking gray oceans and gray skies, arguing that failure makes us what we are, and fuck beauty pageants–there’s not really a triumph, just a refusal to fold. That scene captured what the filmmakers (directors, writer, cast–the whole thing) do so well: they resist that desperate desire to be judged and to win, even as they never separate us from the heartbreak of being judged. Which sounds all sappy, don’t it? They carry it off. Good stuff.
And, god, why doesn’t Alan Arkin get job after job? Everyone’s wonderful, but he’s a force of nature.
as the lone voice of reason, i’ve got to say that this film sucks. are you guys even serious? this is a road movie we have seen a million times — the dysfunctional family that starts off all broken up then bonds in the sweetest possible way when its members accept and embrace each other’s loserishness? okay, in no particular order: transamerica, rain man, anywhere but here. and the goofy little kid movie? little man tate, about a boy (basically the same ending)… what else? i’m lousy at rattling off titles, but i’m sure you can.
thing is, i’ve seen them all: loser father who realizes his (wanna be) got-getter attitude is all a big fake (thank you for smoking); dirty old man who embarrasses the family; angst-ridden teenage boy; keep-the-fam-together all-suffering mom; thorn-in-the-side gay relative; suicidal gay man… (a friend of mine has a pet peeve about representations of intellectuals in american movies: this number one proust scholar doesn’t look very convincing, or very interesting, to me).
and where is the cynicism? this is a such a pat feel-good movie that i’m feeling totally, irremediably bummed. happy new year, everyone!
Another voice of reason to the rescue! The end left me very queasy. What is Olive doing that is so terrible? The sexuality of her dance is no greater, and no worse, than that of all the other girls’ performances. And the family solidarity, and self-righteousness, around her striptease, taught to her by her dirty-old-man grandad (was practicising really all they were doing behind all those closed doors?) seemed perverse. It’s not just that all the characters were depressed – it’s that they seemed to have no moral compass at all.
Sorry if this sounds shrill and prudish, but the characters have to seem real for us to care about their struggles with their loserishness. Chekhov has that. This doesn’t.
You’re comparing it to Chekhov? Well, who would be foolish enough to do that.
Simon’s take on the end was–I seem to recall–Jim Kincaid’s, too. The end wasn’t surprising, and I wish the film had extended its affection for losers to everyone at the pageant, but I can attest to at least one person seeing the end and being disgusted by how the movie exploits Olive, seeing very clear distinctions between her performance and the others.
And I can’t argue with your respective dismissals of the plot; reduced, distilled, broken down to the bare bones of its road story and, sure, its end, is about feeling better. But ….
feeling good? The performances are so grounded, the cartoons breathe; the ending may be happier, but we’ve enjoyed the death of one major character, persistent talk of suicide for at least a couple others, failed dreams, real bitter family disputes. This film was funnier and sadder than every one of the other movies you named, G–and a good number of others.
And what’s more depressing than a lack of moral compass? Or, a slight qualification, maybe it’s not that they lack tha m.c. but have a moral compass that is solely, wholly defined by national ideologies of success? (If you fail, you should be depressed, and you are a bad person….)
can’t be funnier and sadder than about a boy.
And doesn’t Kinnear figure that out in the film’s final scene; as he sits in the audience doesn’t his “philosophy of winning” crumble to the floor and isn’t this ideology of success the force that has thrown his family into dysfunction, anger and despair (three steps short of a higher power)? I’m not saying the characters are going to run off to Disneyworld, but discoveries are made on this journey (they are actually communicating with each other by the end and that communication is palliative, yes?). Olive attends the pageant not because anyone in her family forced her but because her aunt entered her in the local contest without anyone’s consent. And come on, I know I’m jaded but grandad wasn’t fiddling in the basement; though he certainly was using Olive to forward his own cynical views of human nature. It’s her unknowingness that makes the dance routine work (or to put it a better way, her routine makes visible the social and cultural rot hiding beneath the layers of make-up and spandex that defines such suburban rituals). Sure, it’s a bleakly comic portrait and we have seen it before, but Little Miss Sunshine is full of smart performances and is visually quite sophisticated. I appreciated it more the second time than the first. And Paul Dano . . . man what a performance! And Steve Carrel’s use of silence and stillness. And Toni Collette!!! She’s a wonder. And Kinnear is probably the most underrated actor in Hollywood.
no, i didn’t see the molesting grandfather either. in fact, i think the movie goes some ways towards ruling that out, by making him sweet but matter-of-fact on the night when olive sleeps in his motel room (olive keeps asking him questions, and he answers reassuringly but ready to get up and let her go to sleep when he’s done answering, only to be stopped by another question).
i just can’t see any deeper significance in this film than “we are dysfunctional in our own different ways but we can still pull together, love each other, and maybe reach some measure of happiness.” it’s a fine message, but not exactly earth-shattering in its filmic or literary originality.
i just saw children of men and i’d really like for someone to post on it so i can add my two cents’ worth! i couldn’t get into it as much as i would have liked, even though i admired it. must be my mood. the apocalypse feels a little too real these days — which is why i want to keep imaginings of it at arm’s lenght.
little miss sunshine arrived from netflix today. look for the definitive review soon. i’ve no idea what you lot said above (have been avoiding this discussion) but i’m sure you’re all wrong.
it hurts me to agree with both an italian and a philosopher in one swoop but goodness, this was a piece of crap, wasn’t it? entertaining in a well-crafted kind of way but also smug, QUIRKY, and predictable. steve carell and alan arkin give it the little life it has, but this is just comedy/drama of the obvious designed to make people feel superior.
and gio’s right twice in one day (when was the last time that happened?): about a boy is a vastly superior film–its discomforts more discomfiting, more lived-in, its grudging nudges to acceptance more felt. and if you want american, the excellent junebug blows this out of the water with its authentic eccentricity and refusal to resolve. is there something in the air in minnesota that makes mike and jeff soft in the head?
Quirky? Overtly so. Predictable? Not entirely. SMUG? Can’t agree with that. Look, I like the film a lot, but I also think About a Boy to be just as good if not better (though slicker, more Hollywood in its aesthetics, including Badly Drawn Boy’s syurpy soundtrack); and Junebug goes down as the greatest film released in 2005 as far as I’m concerned. I own Junebug but will never own Little Miss Sunshine. So the Minnesota air must be good for something.
By the way . . . two of the best scenes in 2006 were set around dinner tables. I love the way everything in the first twenty minutes of Sunshine builds towards that dinner scene (the entire sequence is so carefully edited and the rhythmic cacophany of a family hanging on by a thread is smart filmmaking). Best dinner table scene of the year? Ricky Bobby saying grace in Talledaga Nights. “Dad, you made that grace your bitch!”
oh, it is indubitably smug. you’re set up to feel superior to greg kinnear’s character from the moment his face flashes on the screen. that entire dinner table scene revolves around establishing his loser-hood, and secondarily the “QUIRKINESS” of the family. yes, we get it, they’re dysfunctional and FUNNY. it is indeed carefully edited, and sets up nicely the prefab feel of the entire film. we spend the first half of the film snickering with the other family members at kinnear’s character, and then he unconvincingly comes around when the time comes to snicker instead at the beauty paegant. at all times the audience is positioned outside: watching the oddballs but always laughing at them. since the objects of the laughter are so ridiculous — “9 steps to success”, being a loser academic who tries to kill himself out of professional jealousy, a teenager on a nietzche inspired vow of silence, idiots at a kids’ beauty paegant — the audience is presented as smarter, knowing, and unimplicated.
Well, if it wasn’t Kinnear, maybe I’d buy your point more–but to cast GK is to bank a certain amount of audience identification and connection. Maybe not with Chakladar and Pompele, but others are going to read past the character and connect with the persona, which is I think Jeff’s and my point. Same goes for Carell, Colette, and all of the characters — sure, they’re cartoons, but the cast and the direction run perpendicular to (i.e., against, for you humanities types) the superior detachment you see, A.C. By your argument, every Jerry Lewis or Laurel & Hardy movie would be an exercise in audience smugness, as we lord it over the buffoons on screen. I don’t think the characters’ ridiculousness equates to audience ridicule, in this (and other) instance(s).
No use arguing further here. We didn’t watch the same movie, and I wouldn’t spend much time fighting for my reading of this film…. whereas I’m more than ready to squabble about Children of Men.
oooh the softheads are upset!
no, no, no. to watch jerry lewis is to feel squeamish, to be pushed past detachment. by contrast, there is nothing transgressive about anyone’s quirkiness in little miss sunshine. the audience is outside and doesn’t get hit by any pies. and no depth either–every character is summed up by a tic or characterization or two. it isn’t that the characters are ridiculous, it is that their ridiculousness is so neatly packaged and contained. and here i’ll take issue with jeff’s comment above that about a boy is more hollywood in its aesthetics than this film. about a boy had a larger budget probably, but it is a far less predictable film and far more willing to present awkward and unsympathetic characters. if anything, little miss sunshine demonstrates that there is no necessary aesthetic distinction anymore between an indie film and a hollywood film.
to mike’s point about the actors: i’m not sure what the casting has to do with it. i guess i’ll have to have explained to me how the cast or direction run perpendicular to detachment (or at a 45 degree angle to ambivalence).
I empathize with Kinnear’s character. Hell, I understand his rage and anger and his desire to come out on top without giving in to the bullshit and lies (impossible, yes, but highly desirable). He’s stuck in a post-WWII notion of masculinity and the world has passed him by. His son hates him, his wife loves him but she’s holding everything together by a single thread, his father snorts heroine, nodding off at the gods in his own small way. So, unlike Arnab, I did not feel superior to him for a second. He reminded me of everything I love and hate about America (and, hell, throw my dad in the psychodramatic mix and my own embarrassing miscalculations which continue to haunt me, not to mention the paralyzing ambivalence one feels about heading into the second half of one’s life . . . I can only hope for 44 more years). So Kinnear’s character speaks to me, but I’m a softheaded Minnesotian . . . what do I know? I will say that the moment when Arkin crawls up to the front seat to console his son over the lost book deal; that was a painfully familiar yet poignant gesture of goodwill.
Casting formula: (A!)/cos Aud
For all Actor (A) > $57k, ~9 Aud per close-up. Subtract ~2 Aud for male frontal nudity. Multiply by 3.67 if ever married to Demi Moore. (Divide by 6.24 if Demi Moore.) For all Chakladar (FkWd), abrade skin lightly until sensitive, then apply maple glaze and simmer.
I was, at the outset, more than inclined to side with Jeff and reynolds on this one, as I laughed when I watched Little Miss Sunshine and thought that if I laughed, then I must have enjoyed it. But there was something I was feeling inside of me when I walked out of the theater, like I knew I was supposed to like it, but couldn’t help feel as if I what I watched was just a big swindle. I can’t disagree with anything either Arnab or Gio has said, and nothing Jeff or reynolds has said is nudging back to liking this film.
The first time I began to feel ambivalent about this film was the scene when they have to push-start the van and everyone must climb on. Over the image was Sufjan Stevens, who is the Barack Obama of indie music artists right now. And I thought, “the filmmakers are cheating us”–just as, I think, Sofia Coppola cheats us in Marie Antoinette. I don’t like it when filmmakers steal the energy from music in order to compensate for less than interesting images and characterization.
Having said this, I don’t think I felt quite put off by this film as Arnab does, but I suspect his put-offness is being fueled by reynolds’s defense more than anything else. Still, I have to agree with Arnab and Gio. It’s not making my top ten list.
Sufjan may be the “Barack Obama of indie music” but very few people I encounter have heard of him (and the few who have don’t listen to him); when I saw him at Borders he was simply and quietly browsing the spirituality section. Stevens’ is one of my favorite singer/songwriters at the moment and when a piece of his music showed up in Sunshine (minus the vocal track) I was a bit annoyed. But . . . I guarantee you 80% of the audience didn’t even recognize the song much less who wrote/sang it (more problematic for me was the way About A Boy director Paul Weitz used every Iron and Wine song under the sun for his film In Good Company).
Who is this Shugfan?
I frankly was pissed at the convenience of the noun “Sunshine,” which all too obviously connotes light, as opposed to shadow, and the catalytic transformation, when combined with chorophyll, of C02 into O2, thus vital to the emergence of viable life on planet Earth. Would we “miss” sunshine? Yes, obviously. Duh. And not just a “little.” The filmmakers have no respect for our intelligence. It should have been called “Sad Now But Happy Later Don’t Worry Too Much.” Truth in advertising. And no song by Sammy Semen will make me think otherwise.
Hmm. I find the discussion of the use and abuse of good music in a film more interesting than I found the film Little Miss Sunshine. I can’t agree with Arnab that it’s “smug,” and I don’t even remember the scene that used Sufjan (who I generally like a lot).
I didn’t feel superior at all to Greg Kinnear’s character (in no small part that’s a tribute to Kinnear’s skill in the role), and I really don’t think that it was at all the filmmakers’ intention that we feel that way. Arnab, you might not be aware of this up in your mountain enclave with your wolf-dog at your feet drinking cognac by the fire, but self-help books are real, and people spent untold billions on these programs. It would have been an easy shot to depict that business as ridiculous, but I don’t think they did.
I also don’t understand John’s feeling of being “swindled” by the film – though I totally appreciate that manipulative musical cues can sour me on an entire film’s tone.
I liked many individual things about the film – its composition, actors and so on. But the parts never added up to a whole lot for me. I wouldn’t put it in my top films of the year. Yet, it kind of reminds me of Crash last year, another film I didn’t really enjoy, but was satisfied enough to have seen it. but I’d still rather spend 2 hours watching it rather than Ghost Rider or My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
why do i get the feeling that both mauer and jeff have enrolled in self-help programs or dreamed of a sunday afternoon of starting their own? god knows mauer needs a few self-help programs. maybe one titled “9 steps to interpreting signs of smugness in movie”.
the film may not make fun of the self-help industry but it completely sets us up to think of kinnear as a dweeb for buying into its crap and re-selling it. just watch again the scene at dinner when he is pontificating to olive, and carell and the son have a bonding moment listening to him. or when carell and collette bond in the car over carell’s sarcastic responses to kinnear’s spiel. or the entire family’s scorning of kinnear’s “winners don’t eat ice-cream” stuff to olive at the restaurant. we’re not supposed to identify against kinnear in these scenes? and in what similar way are we ever invited to identify against any of the other characters?
the only way in which the film respects kinnear’s character is that it presents him as not a cynical exploiter but as someone who sincerely believes his own crap. but not so much apparently that watching a kids’ beauty paegant doesn’t cause it to evaporate.
reynolds, why is there no sense in arguing further? Or, why is there nonsense in arguing further?
I’m not, I hope you all can guess, not married to my opinions of this film, which keep changing. But by swindle I mean I want a film, not a filmed soundtrack. The filmmakers don’t put enough faith in the image. Why, after all, is there so much music? The scene with the van is the one I remember most, and I wish I could explain why it irritated me a little.
Little Miss sunshine is a great soundtrack movie. I’ll agree to that. And I think Sufjan Steven’s place in the music world is not that different than Little Miss Sunshine‘s place in the movie world. Even so, I don’t think it’s important whether or not people know him. I think I would have felt the same way if I didn’t know him. Besides, I had no clue who Mychael Danna and DeVotchKa were. But maybe I need to watch this film again with my glazzies open and my ookos closed.
John, your point at 19, and Mark’s, and I think mine (at the moment you cite), and others’ somewhere along here. We’re welcome to argue–it’s fun! I didn’t mean to pooh-pooh argument at all (he said pooh-pooh!), but, speaking for myself and drawing upon your and others’ reactions above, it strikes me that none of us cared enough to really dig in, and we seem to be arguing because we differ but the point of difference seems almost irrelevant. (Are we really arguing about whether people like or are meant to hate Greg Kinnear’s character?) Unlike other of our debates, we seem a bit detached. Like arguing over which soup to serve. I like clam chowder, but at a certain point I have more fun being silly than arguing about clam chowder. Though you are patently foolish to so furiously dislike clam chowder. And by “you” I mean Arnab. And by “clam chowder” I mean me. And by “foolish” and “furiously dislike” I mean, of course, “intelligent” and “desire”.
i don’t think people are meant to “hate greg kinnear’s character”. but i think we can look at how the other characters look at him vis a vis whether the film looks at other characters in the same ways and make a case for a certain kind of positioning of that character which doesn’t have to take recourse to some knowledge of the actors’ personas (what is toni collette’s persona anyway?) or of our relationship to post-ww2 american masculinity.
the options are not hate kinnear/love kinnear. but clam chowder is terrible.
I thought I had dug into a pretty specific point, made elsewhere too, about the use of music. Do you want me to dig for clams?
Sufjan Stevens hasn’t been nominated for any Grammys in the last couple of years (Michigan and Illinois are two remarkable discs to fly so low under the radar). Little Miss Sunshine, however, will be taking a trip to the Kodak Theatre. It’s directors today were nominated for a DGA award (a list which failed to include Clint Eastwood much to the chagrin of many). That doesn’t mean much to be honest (at least not to me) but it does suggest Sunshine is a bit more than an indie house petunia. Oh hell, obviously I’m bored and should be writing about my agonizingly conflicted response to Little Children, but I heart Sufjan loads and loads and appreciate any film willing to drop a few of his notes into the soundtrack.
How do the other characters look at Kinnear’s character by the end of the film?
of course they like him better, but that’s because he’s become more like them (in a completely unconvincing fashion).
i should go listen to the sufjan stevens cuts on the disc you made me.
i gave my one sufjan stevens cd away. now i wish i had it back.
the film would have worked a lot better if the toni collette character had been as flawed as the other ones. every character has a “problem:” her character has none. if this is meant to be a cynical (though in a sweet and QUIRKY way) film that looks at the pain of life straight in the eye, it should have given an achilles’ heel to toni collette as well. having a loving mother that keeps it all together with patience and acceptance opens the floodgates of banality.
have you noticed, by the way, how powerful films tend to be in which mothers are not perfect? mike leigh’s film, for starters. but i’m thinking now of the great nobody knows, which i know to be one of jeff’s faves. the mother, though she figures in the film just a short time, is a fabulous (if slightly repellent) character.
The representation of mothers — that’s a good point about this film, and an interesting start for discussing others. I think one of the reasons I tended to dig The Queen, despite my relative disinterest in matters monarchical, was the complex notions of “motherhood” that circulate around her (and Diana), as inflected by politics *and* the personal. And Elizabeth/Mirren’s “bad” mothering is, in part, why she’s taking shit in the film. Parental “instincts” also underpin some of the tensions in Mirren’s last “Prime Suspect” film, don’t they? Hm. This deserves its own thread.
(As does the music question. I got to thinking about Children of Men, as I sensed Jeff didn’t like the music choices much, but I found ’em superb–particularly Jarvis Cocker chanting about how “the cunts are still running the world”….)
My favorite film mother is Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate–also in many ways “repellent” but absolutely more compelling than any other character in the film.